		KIllustrator - Release 0.6
		==========================

1. Introduction
---------------

Welcome to release 0.6 of KIllustrator - the vector
drawing program for the K Desktop Environment. The aim of the
KIllustrator project is the development of a freely available
vector-based drawing application similiar to Corel Draw or Adobe
Illustrator. I have started this project because I am tired of
switching to Windows in order to design illustrations for papers or
slides with a modern drawing tool. Now, for the Linux operating system
and of course for other Unixes the Qt toolkit and the KDE project
provide a perfect foundation for this kind of application.

2. Installation
---------------

KIllustrator comes in source code only - you have to compile the
package for yourself. But the configuration and compilation conforms
to the usual GNU autoconf procedure.

After downloading the archive, unpack the distribution with
	gunzip -c killustrator-0.6.tar.gz | tar xvof -
Next, change into the distribution directory 
	cd killustrator-0.6
and invoke
	./configure

The installation requires a working K Desktop Environment (1.1 or
better) as well as QT-1.41 or better. The current release is tested on
Linux and Solaris 2.6 with gcc-2.8 and egcs-1.0. For image export
(JPEG and PNG) the Qt Image I/O Extension (qimgio) is
required. Otherwise only XPM, PPM and GIF is supported.

After the successfull configuration compile the project
	make
and install it (optionally)
	make install

If you dislike KIllustrator or in case of an upgrade you should be able to
remove the package with
	make uninstall

3. Features
-----------

Here is a short description of currently implemented features: 
- different object types: polylines, freehand lines, circles,
  ellipses, squares, rectangles, symmetric polygones,
  bezier curves, multiline text, raster images
- tools for creating these objects
- tools for moving, scaling, rotating, shearing as well as
  grouping, ungrouping, aligning, distributing and
  reordering objects
- a property editor
- multi-window support with cut/copy/paste between the windows
- zooming and snapping to grid
- multi-level undo and redo
- (network-transparent) drop support with the KDE filemanager
- printing to PostScript (file or printer)
- Import of WMF-Cliparts (Thanks to Stefan Taferner)
- editing, inserting and deleting single points of polylines and curves
- different line styles and arrows
- export to raster image formats (JPEG, PNG, GIF, XPM)
- saving/restoring of default object properties
- export to Encapsulated PostScript
- page layout
- transformation dialog
- rounded rectangles
- fill styles: pattern and gradients
- Closed (and fillable) bezier curves
- arcs and pies
- Graphical layers
- Alignment of text
- XML-based file format
- Support for different measurement units: inches, millimeter, points
- A rudimentary Xfig import filter:
  * Support for 3.1 and 3.2 files
  * Splines not implemented

New in this release:
- Shearing implemented.
- Bitmap objects (GIF, JPEG, XPM, XBM, PNG).
- Alignment of text to path. Supported pathes are polylines, bezier curves,
  polygons and ellipses.
- An outline mode.
- Configuring of tools by double click.
- Inserting and deleting of points in polylines and curves.
- KDE session management.
- Bugfixes.

The handling follows the Corel Draw(tm) user interface. That means:
- Holding down the control key during object creation
  produces squares resp. circles instead of rectangles or
  ellipses.
- Clicking in an existing text object enables the editing of the text.
- You can configure a tool by double clicking the
  activated tool button. Currently, this works only for
  the polygon tool and the ellipse tool.
- Lines are constructed with left click (this adds a new point) and 
  finished with right click.
- Bezier curves are constructed with 4 control
  points. You have to left click 3 times before you can
  finish the curve segment with the right mouse
  button. But you can add more segments by left clicking
  instead of the right button. Sound confusing ? Try it	!
- In addition, there are some new keyboard shortcuts:
  * In the canvas, selected objects can be moved by 
    pressing the cursor keys (big steps) or
    SHIFT+cursor keys (smaller steps).
  * There is a magnetic mode for appending 
    to polylines and bezier curves: Press SHIFT+Left
    Button near the point of line to snap the new line 
    segment to this point.
  * Polylines and bezier curves are closed by SHIFT+Right button.
  * You can cancel selection or line adding with ESC.

4. Contributions
----------------

The development of this kind of application is surely much
effort. Because I won't spend my whole spare time in coding, I invite
you to participate in the KIllustrator project. So, if you plan to
contribute some code, please contact me in order to avoid duplicate
work. 

5. Bugs
-------

Of course the current snapshot contains a lot of bugs. Here is a list
of known bugs and limitations:
- session management isn't implemented
- export to raster image consumes a lot of memory
- the drawing code is slow
- no help available
- poorly documented code ;-)
- undo/redo for layer operations not implemented

6. Download
-----------

The primary site for downloading the development snapshot and 
additional information is
	http://wwwiti.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/~sattler/killustrator.html
In addition, the sourrce code should available from the KDE ftp site
and it's mirrors:
        ftp://ftp.kde.org

7. Contributors
---------------

8. History
----------

12/??/98: release 0.6
11/06/98: release 0.5
08/28/98: release 0.4.1
08/10/98: release 0.4
06/02/98: release 0.3
04/21/98: second snapshot released
03/25/98: first preview version released

9. Contact 
----------

I am interested to know if you find KIllustrator useful. If you would
like to contribute to the development, send bug reports or
suggestions, please feel free to contact me at
kus@iti.cs.uni-magdeburg.de.

